The Verdict (38 page)
Authors: Nick Stone
I should’ve turned and left then, but my curiosity got the better of me. I was standing in the middle of Sid Kopf’s inner sanctum, the brains and soul of the company. What was it that made someone like him tick, exactly? Why was he so interested in photographing crumbling old London buildings – therefore preserving the past; therefore prone to reflection and sentimentality – yet so ruthless in the way he ran his business?
Kopf’s personality was all over the room. The furniture was antique and obviously expensive, but as tasteful as it was solid and durable. There were no framed degree certificates here, no photographs of him with any of his famous clients, and no pictures of the family I knew he had from stray office gossip. This was his seat of power. This was where he ruled.
I went and stood behind his desk. I sat down. The backrest of his chair resisted my attempts at getting comfortable, refusing to yield, so I found myself leaning precariously over the desk, on the verge of tipping over.
I pushed one of the levers under the seat. The chair dropped down suddenly with a hydraulic hiss. I tried another and the chair sprang back up and bucked forward, slamming my kneecaps painfully into the desk.
OK. Time to go.
I readjusted the chair to roughly how I’d found it. Then I scanned his desk to make sure I hadn’t displaced anything.
All in order.
Except for Edwina’s phone. I’d left that on top of the filing cabinet.
As I got up to fetch it, I noticed that the bottom drawer of the cabinet wasn’t quite closed.
I opened it.
There were two hanging files, one pretty much stuffed to capacity, the other only partially filled. The files were index tagged 2008–10 and 2011–.
I reached into the latter.
There was a single document. A will, made by Scott Nagle. It was a three-page document. I scanned it quickly. The man was worth multi-millions. He’d left his estate to his three sons, and put ten million in a trust for each of his seven grandchildren. He’d bequeathed money to his PA, his driver, cooks and cleaners. Decent bloke, I thought.
And then something caught my eye.
A name:
Miriam Zengeni
.
He’d left her the deeds to a flat in Archer House, Vicarage Crescent, Battersea, and set up a trust in her name.
Archer House?
That was the block of flats near Battersea Embankment where I’d seen Swayne talking to his ex-wife.
Nagle had also left a million pounds to a Bridget Zengeni.
Zengeni
…
?
Where did I know that name from?
I put the will back.
I opened the top drawer. More hanging files, again indexed by year. The first was for 1962 – the year the firm had started. The other drawers held files all the way to the present, grouped by decade.
I opened the penultimate drawer, randomly reached for the 1992 file, and took out the first document I found.
Scott Nagle Associates had bought a block in Oakley Street, Chelsea. Kopf had overseen the deal.
I looked in the 1999 file, and found a letter from Sid Kopf to Wandsworth Council. He expressed his client’s ‘profound disappointment’ that his bid to redevelop Battersea Power Station had been rejected. His client was Scott Nagle Associates.
I looked in another drawer. Pulled out a file: 1981 – a different property deal. Three houses in Powis Square, Notting Hill. The buyer was Scott Nagle Associates. The law firm: Kopf-Purdom. Before Janet’s time.
Then I went to the top drawer and pulled out the very first file: 1962. Scott Nagle Associates had bought a penthouse in Lancaster Gate. Sid Kopf had represented him.
Scott Nagle was Kopf’s only client, or so it seemed.
The next document in was another will – or a draft of one. There were annotations in several pages in red. Every corrected line had initials in the margin. ‘SK’.
The will was that of Thomas Nagle. He’d divided his estate evenly between his two sons, Scott and Michael. Michael’s share of the inheritance was conditional on his changing his family name from his mother’s to his father’s.
Michael’s maternal name was ‘Zengeni’.
Michael
Zengeni
.
Now I remembered.
I’d looked up Oliver Wingrove and the White Ghosts on the internet after Swayne told me about them. I’d found all of one thing about Wingrove. He’d appeared at an inquest into the death of Michael Zengeni in Rhodesia.
Michael Zengeni was Scott Nagle’s half-brother.
Not for the first time did I ask myself the following questions:
What the hell was Swayne getting at?
And what did this have to do with VJ?
Contrary to popular belief, you can’t find everything you want on the internet. This especially applied to information on Scott Nagle. He didn’t have a website, nor any other official internet presence, and there were no photos of him.
An hour’s trawl turned up all of a single paragraph in Wikipedia:
Scott Nagle (born on March 8th, 1932) is a British businessman, financier and real estate tycoon. His father was Thomas Nagle, the British property developer. The Sunday Times has estimated him to be worth £1.2 billion [citation needed]. In 1979 he won undisclosed damages from Private Eye, the satirical and current affairs magazine, over an article suggesting complicity in his first wife’s death.
After work I schlepped over to the British Library’s newspaper archive in Colindale, north London. I bought a one-day pass, found a place in the reading room and started searching.
Call it fate or coincidence or just the way things happen to shake out, but I’d crossed paths with Scott Nagle long before I started working at KRP.
My bedsit in Montague Terrace, Croydon, was his. Nagle had owned not just that house, but almost
every
house in that miserable street, where the trees were either dead or had been set on fire, and most of the cars were on blocks or not worth nicking.
He was a slumlord.
, March 8th, 1962
Property Developer Laid to Rest
The funeral service of Thomas Nagle, the property tycoon, took place at Brompton Oratory in South Kensington. Nagle, a former Quaker, had converted to Catholicism ten years ago. He is survived by his wife Sybil and his son, Scott.
(There was a picture accompanying the piece. Taken in the street, outside the church, it showed Scott Nagle, in profile. A tall man with dark wavy hair and a thin face, dominated by a long and fleshy nose. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound shades. He had on a black suit and tie, and winkle pickers. Standing next to him were two women in dark coats. The youngest wore her hair in a beehive and stared straight into the camera, all smouldering, pouty model poise. The woman at her side was older and blonde. She’d lifted up her dark glasses to dab at a tear on her cheek. The fourth person in the photo was blonde too. He was partially turned away from the photographer and seemed to be talking to Nagle. It took me a while to recognise this figure in the double-breasted black suit. It was the hair that threw me, a short and stylish pompadour complete with medium-length sideburns. It was Sid Kopf.)
, May 22nd, 1962
Zengeni Inquest Returns Open Verdict
An inquest today on the death of Michael Zengeni, illegitimate son of late property developer Thomas Nagle, recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.
Zengeni, a British citizen living in Rhodesia, was first reported missing in November 1961, when he failed to arrive at Heathrow airport on a flight he had been booked on.
Captain Oliver Wingrove of the British South Africa Police, who headed up the investigation into Zengeni’s disappearance in Rhodesia, told the coroner how Zengeni’s badly decomposed body was found in the back of his abandoned car, some twenty miles outside Salisbury the following month.
Zengeni’s body was identified by Wingrove with the help of dental records from England.
During the course of the inquest it was revealed that Michael was the son of Thomas Nagle and a black South African woman, who Nagle is believed to have met on a business trip to Rhodesia. Michael and his half-brother Scott were born days apart, with Michael being the eldest. Although Thomas Nagle never publicly recognised Michael as his son, he paid for his education in England.
Miriam Zengeni, Michael’s widow and mother to their one-year-old daughter, stated that the family had experienced ‘hostility and threats’ from both white and black Rhodesians while living on their farm outside the town of Hartley.
, April 11th, 1972
World in Action
Injunction Upheld
An injunction taken out by real estate magnate Scott Nagle against Granada Television and the producers of current affairs programme
World in Action
was upheld today in the Royal Courts of Justice.
The programme,
Lucifer’s Landlord
, was to have aired last November. Mr Nagle was granted the injunction against the broadcast on the grounds that it was defamatory.
Scott Nagle is believed to own over a thousand rental properties in the country, predominantly in London and the South-East. It has long been rumoured that Nagle has forced owners out of properties he has wished to acquire through various forms of intimidation. These are believed to include installing prostitutes and drug dealers in neighbouring houses, and encouraging West Indian immigrants to use his property as ‘sha-beens’ – illegal drinking dens – complete with ‘sound systems’ (playing loud reggae music). There have also been allegations of anonymous threats and violence.
Sid Kopf, Mr Nagle’s lawyer, said his client had ‘no comment to make at this stage’.
, December 27th, 1973
Crucified Man Identified
The body of a man found nailed to the door of a squat in Ladbroke Grove, west London, on Christmas Day has been identified as that of Roland White. White was one of eight people illegally occupying the five-bedroom house.
The property was purchased last year by controversial real estate baron, Scott Nagle. Nagle served the squatters with an eviction notice, which was successfully challenged in court by White, a trainee solicitor.
Police are appealing to witnesses to come forward with information.
, June 24th, 1979
Property Tycoon’s Wife Found Dead
Estelle Nagle, wife of controversial property tycoon Scott Nagle, was found dead at her home in Holland Park. The couple, who had separated earlier this year, were said to have started divorce proceedings. A police spokesman declined to comment on the investigation.
, October 30th, 1979
Property Tycoon’s Wife’s Death Ruled “Accidental”
An inquest into the death of Estelle Nagle, the estranged wife of property mogul, Scott Nagle, has returned a verdict of accidental death caused by electrocution.
Mrs Nagle was found dead in the bathtub of the Holland Park home she had shared with her husband and their two children. A hairdryer was also found in the tub, still connected to a wall socket. It is believed Mrs Nagle may have been drinking at the time. She had started divorce proceedings against her husband.
Sidney Kopf, Mr Nagle’s lawyer, said his client had ‘no comment to make at this stage’.
, May 3rd, 1981
Court Reduces
Private
Eye
Libel Damages
The £500,000 in libel damages awarded to Scott Nagle against
Private Eye
last December has been reduced to £50,000 on appeal.
Nagle, a property tycoon thought to own more than five thousand homes in England, sued the magazine over a piece in the magazine’s Grovel column. Referring to the tycoon as ‘Scotty Nailgun’, the article suggested that he was complicit in his wife’s death.
Estelle Nagle was found dead in her bathtub in 1979 after a hairdryer fell in the water. An inquest ruled her death as accidental.
, September 26th, 1999
Council Rejects Nagle Battersea Power Station Bid
Wandsworth Council has rejected a £300-million bid by property tycoon Scott Nagle to redevelop Battersea Power Station. The Grade II listed building has stood empty for more than two decades, as owners and redevelopers have come and gone.
Wandsworth Council officially stated that the bid was rejected because it included no provision to create affordable housing in the area. A source close to the Council’s Planning Approval Committee told the
Standard
that there were also ‘gross irregularities’ with Nagle’s bid.
The tycoon is believed to have bid for the property ‘quasi-anonymously’, using an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands and an Egyptian frontman, Waleed Dallal.
Sid Kopf, Mr Nagle’s lawyer, said his client had ‘no further comment to make at this stage’.
, September 7th, 2001
Nagle Quits UK Property Market
Scott Nagle, the controversial and equally reclusive property tycoon, has quit the British property market. Nagle sold the last of his 18,000 UK properties last week.
No official reason has been given for his decision. A spokesperson from Nagle’s law firm, Kopf-Randall-Purdom, said their client had ‘no further comment to make at this stage’.
It was gone 10 p.m. when I left the library. I went to King’s Cross to get the Tube back to Victoria.
I was equal parts relieved and frustrated. I was glad to be done, because I was tired and my eyes were hurting. But I wasn’t sure if I’d gone and wasted the last four hours. I’d come here thinking I’d find what Swayne had been getting at, and maybe tie it into VJ’s case, but I had nothing whatsoever.
What did Scott Nagle have to do with VJ? Apart from the fact that they shared a law firm, there was no obvious connection. They weren’t rivals. VJ ran a hedge fund, and the little real estate he owned here was land. And besides, Nagle had retired.
This much I knew:
There
was
a link between the Silver Service Agency and Evelyn Bates’s murder, in the shape of Rudy Saks.
And there was also a link between the Nagle family and the agency, because Oliver Wingrove had investigated Michael Zengeni’s disappearance.
But how did the two fit together?
Or did they fit at all?
Swayne was the common bond, the glue. But I couldn’t reach him.
At the station, I felt a melancholy pull. I could quite easily have bought a ticket and caught the next train to Stevenage. I’d be there in under an hour, ringing my parents’ doorbell fifteen minutes later.
My first couple of years in London, I’d gone back to Stevenage once a month. I loved my parents dearly, but I hated those weekends and couldn’t wait to leave. All those bad bad memories from the Dark Ages; every pub I’d got chucked out of or barred from, every shopfront I’d passed out in, and the faces of all the people who’d seen me at my worst, the nudges and whispers to their friends when they saw me, the fingerpointing. So it was best to stay away. Which I’d pretty much ended up doing. I hadn’t been ‘home’ in twelve years.
My phone rang.
Melissa.
‘Are you free to talk?’ she asked. She sounded pissed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I need someone to talk to. Are you at home?’ she asked.
Definitely pissed.
‘No. Just leaving work,’ I said.
‘Can you drop by?’
Going to see an ex-girlfriend at night, when she’s alone, half-cut and vulnerable, isn’t just a bad idea, it’s a
really
bad idea. Just say no. Sorry, got to get home. See my wife, see my kids, have dinner, fall asleep…
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’